Managing the White House and Federal Agencies

Session Submission Type: In-Person Created Panel

Session Description

How do presidents attempt to manage the White House and federal agencies? Dickinson and Reinmuth examine the turnover and qualifications of the people who worked in the Trump White House. Analyzing an original dataset of more than 200 Trump White House appointees, Dickinson and Reinmuth assess how loyalty and competence affect appointments to the Trump White House. Cohen and Hult focus on the impact of Mark Meadows as Donald Trump’s last chief of staff. Drawing on original interviews and surveys of former staff members in the Trump White House and executive branch, Cohen and Hult show that Meadows was particularly challenged in his job as he began his tenure as the United States was being thrust into the uncertainty, chaos, and panic of a global public health pandemic. Focusing directly on chiefs of staff’s relationship with the president, Beckmann examines how chiefs of staff sought to manage the president’s workflow. Assessing presidents’ daily work patterns from Carter through Reagan, Beckmann finds that chiefs of staff had only limited impact on the duration or composition of their respective President's work patterns, with differences across chiefs of staff attributable to how much personal access the President grants to each. Pfiffner examines the impact of chiefs of staff on managing White House staff-Cabinet relations. Applying recent works on the presidency to the Biden administration, Pfiffner provides an assessment of strategies and actions of the Biden presidency.

Sub Unit

• Division 23: Presidents and Executive Politics

Cosponsor

• Division 24: Public Administration

Individual Presentations

• Who Serves? Competence and Loyalty in the Trump White House Staff - Matthew J. Dickinson; Kate Reinmuth, Stanford University

• The Short but Indelible Tenure of Mark Meadows as Trump’s Last Chief of Staff - David B. Cohen, The University of Akron; Karen M. Hult, Virginia Tech

• Do White House Chiefs of Staff Manage Up? - Matthew N. Beckmann, University of California, Irvine

• Organizing the Biden Presidency (Pre-Recorded) - James P. Pfiffner

Chair

• Andrew C. Rudalevige Bowdoin College

Discussants

• John Koehler Texas A&M University, Central Texas

• Andrew C. Rudalevige Bowdoin College